Neste Oil is trying to shut down Greenpeace’s Nestespoil.com website

A Finnish state owned oil refining company Neste Oil is trying to shut down Greenpeace’s Nestespoil.com website by demanding domain for itself.

The site is currently locked but the content can be found at www.greenpeace.fi/nestespoilcom. Wipo has made no decision yet on the case so there is no reason to lock the site and the domain.

Nestespoil.com parodies the Annual report 2011 of Neste Oil and criticizes the company’s biodiesel business that aggravates forest destruction. Neste Oil has made a complaint to WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) in which it tries to get Greenpeace’s Nestespoil.com domain for itself. See our response.

Instead of investing in sustainable raw materials Neste Oil tries to silence criticism with juridicial threatening. On top of causing forest destruction, the state-owned company is now also attacking the freedom of speech.

More and more large companies are striving with legal threats to silence the critics. Now it seems Neste Oil has chosen this path as well. We urge Neste Oil to concentrate in cleaning their act instead of threatening us. After all, if their policies and practices were right, there would be need for a spoof site like this.

Greenpeace has campaigned against Neste Oil’s palm oil diesel since 2007. The use of palm oil as raw material for biodiesel aggravates forest destruction because of the increase in demand of palm oil, and therefore demand for arable land for plantations. More and more rainforests are cut down and peat lands burned for palm oil plantations. Emissions from land use change make palm oil based biodiesel worse for climate than fossil diesel. Neste Oil’s massive investments in biodiesel production have made the company the largest biofuel producer and one of the largest buyers of palm oil in the world.

European commission is currently evaluating how the indirect land use change impacts of biofuels (ILUC) could be prevented. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has also stated that palm oil diesel doesn´t reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to be included in the Renewable Fuel Standard program. Neste Oil is very actively lobbying against these decisions. Neste Oil U.S. Inc., Indonesian Palm Oil Board and Malaysian Palm Oil Council have hired the law firm Holland & Knight to resist EPA’s decision. In Europe Burston Marsteller has worked as Neste Oils lobbyist.

A Finnish state-owned oil refining company Neste Oil is trying to shut down our spoofsite Nestespoil.com, because we criticize their biodiesel production for aggravating forest destruction.